Sciencemadness Discussion Board

best place to get Chloroform?

Db33 - 30-12-2016 at 07:19

Ive considered making my own, but i think for the amount i need id rather buy some. Does anyone have a trusted supplier i can use? I live in the USA.

JJay - 30-12-2016 at 07:28

Grainger certainly sells it... I'm not sure you can just walk in and ask the clerk at the counter to sell you a liter of chloroform, but it shouldn't be much harder than that... it's just chloroform, after all....

[Edited on 31-12-2016 by JJay]

Texium - 30-12-2016 at 09:21

How much do you need? If you get several gallons of the 10% hypochlorite pool chlorinator (just a couple dollars/gallon) it's actually quite affordable to make on the scale of hundreds of milliliters.

If you just need it as a solvent, have you considered using DCM instead? It works as a substitute for chloroform in many situations and is easier to get in bulk by distilling DCM based paint stripper.

careysub - 30-12-2016 at 14:16

Quote: Originally posted by zts16  
How much do you need? If you get several gallons of the 10% hypochlorite pool chlorinator (just a couple dollars/gallon) it's actually quite affordable to make on the scale of hundreds of milliliters.

If you just need it as a solvent, have you considered using DCM instead? It works as a substitute for chloroform in many situations and is easier to get in bulk by distilling DCM based paint stripper.


There a number of videos on YouTube showing procedures for performing the haloform reaction to get chloroform, some better than others (naturally).

Here is a thread discussing heroic scale preparation (1 L) using a garbage can as the reaction vessel. It appears that doing the reaction in an ice mixture as the reaction mixture (as opposed to trying to cool from the outside) is a good practice.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=15584

Another piece of advice I have seen for anyone trying to do a large scale haloform synthesis is make sure you have plenty of ice, and add the acetone slowly with thorough mixing, and checking your ice supply as it proceeds. If you start running low on ice, stop adding acetone and get more ice.

How economical is this, compared to buying it from Elemental Scientific, say?

Elemental sells 16 oz of chloroform for $25.49 (not including shipping) which is $56/L.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.as...

The price of haloform chloroform is dominated by the price of the hypochlorite (sodium and calcium have the same chlorine content). About the cheapest you can find hypochlorite is around $4/lb (pool shock chemicals - liquid bleach costs more) which makes the chloroform in reagent cost come out to be $35/L, not that great a savings for the trouble and effort to get it into comparable purity.

Currently SoapGoods is dumping its inventory of sodium hypochlorite for almost nothing, shipping on 50 lb is 2/3 of the cost (about $75) for a price of $1.50/lb and chloroform cost of about $20/L. That is quite a bit cheaper, but dependent on huge scale and a special source of cheap hypochlorite.

[Edited on 30-12-2016 by careysub]

confused - 30-12-2016 at 16:25

Quote: Originally posted by careysub  

Here is a thread discussing heroic scale preparation (1 L) using a garbage can as the reaction vessel. It appears that doing the reaction in an ice mixture as the reaction mixture (as opposed to trying to cool from the outside) is a good practice.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=15584

Another piece of advice I have seen for anyone trying to do a large scale haloform synthesis is make sure you have plenty of ice, and add the acetone slowly with thorough mixing, and checking your ice supply as it proceeds. If you start running low on ice, stop adding acetone and get more ice.
[Edited on 30-12-2016 by careysub]


i would second the ice bath suggestion, expecially if you live in a hotter climate, the high vapour pressure of the chloroform made the vessel i was separating it in rupture.

not my proudest moment

CharlieA - 30-12-2016 at 16:44

confused: I am confused with you! What kind of vessel were you using? Was it sealed? I think I have to read the thread on this.